aterat | Dealing With It event log

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Dealing With It event log

Who; Harry Dresden, Lauri-Ell, Ignis Scientia
What; Taking down a plant monster
Where; The clearing
When; Late September
Warnings; Violence? Trash talking plants?

The key to any taking down of a big nasty was preparation. Sure, they had a flower-obsessed battering ram on their side, but having a bit more firepower when going up against a giant, man-eating (if his luck proved correct) couldn't go wrong, and Harry Dresden intended there to be plenty of firepower. In the days following Watts' update, he'd set about finding others who'd be willing to go toe to toe with the big nasty, and he hadn't been disappointed.

He'd spent the last two days making protection bracelets for each of them. They wouldn't keep anything from hitting them, but it would soften a blow well enough, and he'd brewed a speed potion for each of them, too. He'd made sure the enchantments on his coat were strong to provide himself additional protection, packed the additional braided leather protection bracelets for his new comrads in a sack with their speed potions, and headed toward the path leading to the plant monster that needed pruning to wait for them.

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Ignis could only think of Marlboros so he was already working on preparations of his own. He only had a few potions left from home and would need to replenish or replicate them, but he would do the very best he could right now. He'd helped take down the huge menace that had unfortunately taken lives here, but he would do the best he could.

Letting Nida know he would be back after taking care of an overgrown plant via note, Ignis headed out. He was going to try both Fire and Ice on his daggers but would wait to get to the spot. Fighting of course would have to happen first, but he was as ready as he could be.

Catching sight of Lauri-Ell, Ignis nodded in greeting. "Always a pleasure to see you."

The sight of Lauri-Ell in her armored glory and the other guy, Ignis, clearly prepared for whatever was going to do down. He nodded, shifting hi shoulder, the pack he was carrying settling to the ground as he did so, and he rested his staff against a low wall nearby and knelt beside it.

"Glad that cavalry's here. I brought presents. Gather around." He motioned them over, pulling out two bracelets of woven black leather, offering one to each of them. "Just fasten them on, they'll do their thing." When they did, they'd feel a subtle vibration against their skin. "It'll dampen whatever swings at you, but it won't stop stabs or anything, so make sure you move." He looked over to Ignis. "I made some potions. I haven't figured out the healing thing yet, but if you need to move fast, drink this," he tossed a small sippy bottle to the man. "You'll move like a cheetah for a few minutes, but so will your arms, so be careful." He looked toward Lauri-Ell, "got one for you, too. Catch." He's not a great shot, but the bottle he tosses doesn't go too far wide.

Presents? Lauri's never had a present. She steps forward and accents the bracelet. It seems so small. After a moment of hesitation she winds it around her finger a few times to anchor it there. It's not perfect, but it might do.

"My armor will turn many forms of blades," Lauri offered as she catches the potion and tucks it into her belt. "I shall save the portion for an emergency. I may be fast enough as it is. I am faster and stronger than most humans. Kree are from a world with far higher gravity. Our muscles are more powerful."

"Presents?" Ignis inquired. He wasn't sure what those could be considering they were going into battle. Reaching his hand out for the bracelet, he put it on as instructed and felt the magic there. He smiled softly at it and nodded at the instruction that Harry gave. Moving was something Ignis certainly knew how to do in battle.

He listened to Lauri-Ell speak about her armor and he was glad for her sake that she had it. But then he caught the potion and looked at Harry with a nod. "I do have a few healing potions left if needed. But this may perhaps help avoid as much need for it. Thank you."

"Hey, every advantage helps, right?" He grinned at Lauri-Ell for a moment before turning his attention to Ignis, nodding.

"That's the idea. If you ask me, not getting hit in the first place takes a big preference over getting hit a lot and have to recover." He took final stock of his own weapons. His staff was gripped firmly in his right hand, his blasting rod he took up in his left. It was a shaft of carved wood about a foot and a half long. He shook his own shield bracelet free from his coat sleeve and nodded. He was as prepared as he was going to be for whatever that clearing had planned for them.

"Alrighty, hammer-girl. I think you should take point. Let's go prune a plant."

Well, Harry is not wrong. Though she doesn't much know whether she trusts these advantages or not. They are new things, and she has not had time to research them and learn of them. No, she believed she would resist toying with things she did not understand. Especially since she did not know if it would work with her biology in the slightest.

"It is Lauri-Ell, not hammer girl. Or Accuser," she corrected as she lifted the hammer to her shoulder and strode forward. "If my experience with fighting plants is at all accurate, if they attempt to shoot anything dust like at you, do try to not inhale. It may put you to sleep or make you ill."

"Unfortunately one cannot always direct as to what will and won't happen in battle." Like back home and the king got reckless more than once. And then Gladio tanked and ended up getting more hurt than he'd planned.

But then his green eyes slid over to Harry in some amusement as Lauri-Ell corrected him. However, it didn't last long as the Kree gave sound advice. "Duly noted." the advisor replied.

"The sooner we take it down, the safer everyone will be."

"Okay..." He'd picked up on the fact that Lauri-Ell didn't have much of a sense of humor, but maybe she'd get used to the nicknames eventually. "Still, you're a girl and you have a giant hammer. See? Hammer-Girl." He nodded at her warning though, and it let her know he'd heard her. "I'll make sure I've got a wind spell or two read to go."

He nodded in agreement to Ignis, hefting his staff and his rod and nodding to the man. "I'll bring up the rear. It gives me more time to see what's coming and react accordingly."

It was less that she lacked a sense of humor and more that she hadn't had a chance to develop one. That and names are important.

"I am a woman," she answered. That was not amusing to hear from him, a false attempt at her name. No, she was already more of a fan of this other man with the knives over the wizard.

"I shall endeavor to protect you both and not use energy blasts near you. If I am unarmed, do not worry about me. I can likely tear the things apart with my hands. It has happened before. Are we all ready?"

"I shall hit what I can at the front." Ignis replied in response to Harry. Though he quietly sighed and rolled his eyes away from the man as he and Lauri-Ell bantered. But he turned to look back at Lauri-Ell as she spoke about energy blasts and nodded.

"That sounds like all bases are covered. Let us proceed."

And there was a smile for the team though he didn't feel it right at the moment. However, the sooner they did this the better, and he readied his daggers, heading out to the battlefield.

"Right. Hammer-Woman. My mistake." If Harry knew her preferences, he wouldn't be too surprised. He rubbed people the wrong way a lot of the time. It was an endearing character trait or something.

He continued on, though, nonplussed by her reaction and giving Ignis a nod. The path to the clearing was shorter than he'd have liked. How had such a thing been grown right under their noses?

And then he stopped, eyes going wide when they alighted on their query. "Hell's Bells that's big."

Was it? Lauri-Ell came to a stop when she caught sight of their target and shrugged.

"I have seen larger," she stated before raising an arm to keep the other two back as the bud-covered ground started to snap at her armored feet. Those were already annoying her, so she pointed her hammer at the ground and let off a blast of energy to burn them away.

Ignis wasn't going to underestimate this opponent, but the thing he'd fought before with Nida and Yuna, that beast had been huge and far more formidable looking. However, it wouldn't do to think that meant this thing wasn't somehow nastier.

"Do try not to get hurt, so that you can both make it to my wedding this month."

So as soon as Lauri-Ell struck the ground, Ignis waited and then moved in closer to see how this thing was going to work. But the first thing he did was to set ice to his daggers. If this wasn't effective ice was next and then he had a few other plans in place.

"So have I." And he wasn't lying. That didn't mean he was looking forward to doing battle with this thing, with or without a team at his side, or his front, or generally anywhere within his area.

He chuckled as he brought his blasting rod, a length of wood with runes carved along its length, to bear toward the main bulb. It hissed as Lauri's energy blast ate away its buds, and rose from the ground on a thickly veined stalk, the great trap opened, showing rows of what looked to be shining teeth, and then it moved, and it...spoke? It's voice was the sounds of creaking wood and rustling leaves.

"Interlopersss in my grove." The massive trap turned as though to regard each of them in turn, though no eyes were visible. "I didn't exxxpect the meat to come to me."

Harry swallowed. "Cool. So it does want to eat us," he said quietly, to the others, then louder, "Why am I not surprised the giant plant is going to try to talk us to death?"

"Are you entirely surprised? Sentient plant life is rarely friendly to animal-based evolved creatures," Lauri said to Harry. When she saw Ignis moving closer she looked at him with concern and stepped forward as well, intending to keep herself between them as a protection.

"You will not be eating us. You will either remove yourself and retreat to wherever you came from, or you will be destroyed."

"A talking plant." Ignis mused, shaking his head slightly. Well he'd faced plants that didn't talk and threw all sort of status effects on him and his companions. So maybe one that did speak would be a little more entertaining. And this one didn't have half the roaring capability as one that he'd dealt in the past with.

But he readied his daggers. "You heard the lady. Leave quietly or we will happily weed you out."

"Somebody made a movie about it, once. Pretty campy, catchy music, but nothing worth writing home about."

He forced will into the blasting rod in his right hand and the runes carved along its surface erupted in glowing embers of heat.

"You hear that, Audrey II? Prepare to be pruned." It wasn't his best line, but he was a little distracted at the roiling under the plant, as though something was being ripped from the ground. Roots the size of linebackers' arms erupted from the ground beneath the thing as it hauled itself from the earth.

Oh. Okay, then. The heat he'd gathered into the rod in his had coalesced in a gathering fall of fire around the tip as he aimed. "No, no. Please, no need to get up on our accounts. Fuego!" Liquid fire erupted from the rod, but the plant dodged and the ball exploded with a burst of intense heat against the rock wall behind it, scattering small, superheated stones.

Well, she doesn't know what a movie is to judge whether that was a good or a bad thing. But what she did know was fighting. And this was clearly a fight. Her attention moved briefly to Harry and his blast, but then there was more to consider with the roots. One came lashing out toward her feet and Lauri brought the hammer down with expert timing to crush it to the ground along the way.

"I do not like that it can move," she announced needlessly. It would be bad, if this massive thing could move. But there was clearly no good way to pin it. "Perhaps we can remove the roots?"

Ignis at this point was making sure the thing didn't snag the daggers out of his hands. Already the plant had tried to bite his hands and it was making him mad. He got out of the way for Harry with the Fire, and wanted to keep clear.

Hearing Lauri-Ell state that she didn't like that it could move made him smile because he would have no idea what to do with a stationary adversary. But he had made a few swipes with his ice daggers and was getting ready to switch to his polearm. While he had no plans to come up on its head as he'd done previously with another troublemaker, it would give him the reach.

"That was a thought I had." he acknowledged to the Kree. However, this thing kept snapping with those damn teeth and he was being watchful for patterns.

"Or at least make them hard to use." He wasn't sure it was something he could pull off, but he knew one thing: he needed some time if this admittedly crazy plan was going to work. "What I'm going to try is going to need a lot of ice and I need a few minutes to work without an interruption. He looked between the two of them pointedly before he gave them a two-fingered salute and fell back to find an area of the ground to clear of vines.

He needed to draw a circle and fast.

Hard to use? Yes, that seemed good. Though she did glance at the others and found herself impressed by their skill so far, she wasn't certain how they were supposed to manage this idea of slowing the beast. The ice that Ignis had on his blades was so limited, and Harry...

WEll, she didn't know what Harry did.

Oh well, she let that be and moved to Ignis's side briefly, slamming her hammer to the ground to generate a force field to create a barrier between him and a vine covered in thorns that had risen up to try and strike at him.

"Can you keep it vaguely distracted? If he needs to do something without interruption, I need to create a barrier for him."

Ignis turned and looked back at Harry who was conversing with Lauri-Ell. He had no real idea what they were talking about, but he had tried to freeze the roots and he'd had minimal luck there.

But at Lauri-Ell's request, he nodded and dodged that damned mouth shape with the razor sharp teeth. "I can do that."

It was still odd in his mind to be fighting anything without Nida or the lads with him, but he did trust in the companions he had. Otherwise he wouldn't be here.

"I've got the barrier, just keep Audrey II over there." He finished clearing the ground of vines, an integral part of his plan, and grabbed a stick laying nearby. It would serve as a means to draw a circle in the sand, so to speak, which could be done with anything, really, and that's just what he did. The actual idea he had forming in his mind as he willed the circle closed around him with a auditory pop just at the end of hearing was going to be a complicated one, but only because the target was moving. He watched the plant for a few seconds, how it was moving, how quickly it could change direction, and how it trundled along on its myriad roots. It was almost like a weird octopus, but it told him how he needed to freeze it.

Because that was exactly what he planned on doing: encase the root system in ice. It was going to take a considerable amount of energy, but there was something ambient hovering around here, something he thought he could wrest control of if he needed to. He just needed a few moments to form his thoughts into the spell he'd unleash when he broke the circle.

He just needed his companions to keep it occupied and away from his circle until then.

Well, if she's being dismissed... Lauri-Ell rushes forward, her hammer swinging to slam aside one of the larger roots nearly as thick as her arm. The way it gave under the force of her strike was very satisfying.

"Ignis," she said. "How are you with going high?"

Because she had an idea that might well distract the thing. Which mostly just involved her using her hammer to partially throw him high up over the creature to strike.

Ignis had no idea what the other man was doing, but the snapping razor sharp teeth weren't giving him much time to ponder anything. But he was getting rapidly tired of the snapping and the bursts of fire he gave from his spelldaggers didn't seem to be doing too much. And as he was considering to change the element, he heard Lauri-Ell.

Turning to her for the briefest of moments, he nodded. "There won't be much to land back on, but that won't present a problem."

Of course he'd have to change weapons, but he could do that.

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Dealing With It event log

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